DO 3 
.F7 H3 
Copy 1 

_._ HISTORICAL METHOD OF 
PROFESSOR FREEMAN 




BY 

FREDERIC HARRISON 



mtn gork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
I 



All rights reserved 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD OF 
PROFESSOR FREEMAN . 



BY 



FREDERIC HARRISON 



^ii"; 



[the library 

lOF CONGRESS 
WASHINGTON 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 

I 



All rights reserved 



1/77;;^ 



Copyright, 1898, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



^.M^Y OK CC/^,^ 
^' fiPFiCLOF IKE '^.I' 

63007 OCT 2yi898 



"Naxinaati ^^regg 

J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 
Norwood, Mass. U.S.A. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD OF 
PROFESSOR FREEMAN 1 

It would be no easy task fully to describe the varied 
influence of the late Edward A. Freeman on historical 
learning in England. He effected a revolution in the 
methods of study, both by precept and example; and he 
founded a school, the fruits of which have yet to be gath- 
ered in. His work in guiding and stimulating the studies 
of others was, no doubt, far greater than any literary per- 
formance of his own, considerable as these were. He will 
be remembered, if not so much as a great historian, as a 
leading master in original research. 

No doubt he carried his own admirable zeal for truth 
into a certain exaggeration, which, if it only lessened his 
popularity with the public for his own case, has led his 
feebler imitators into a great deal of barren pedantry. 
The range of his historical studies was really wide, but it 
recognised very rigid limits of its own. The Professor 
hardly ever touched any history of the antique world but 
that of Greece and Rome, and he rarely referred to any- 
thing later than the fifteenth century in Europe. The 
modern State system, the Reformation, the rehgious and 
civil wars of the sixteenth and -seventeenth centuries, the 
commercial and colonial wars of the eighteenth century, 
the intellectual, social, and political revolutions of the 
last 150 years; the entire history of France, Italy, Spain, 
and Germany later than the feudal ages ; the foundation 
and growth of the British Empire, of the United States ; 

1 Copyright in the United Kingdom, by Macmillan & Co. 



4 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

the entire history of Africa, Asia, and America, from the 
age of Menes to our own day, — all this hardly calls out a 
single allusion in the many works of Freeman. 

No one can suppose that he was in any sense ignorant 
of this enormous mass of history, which he resolutely 
ignores as part of his system. However much it interested 
him, he f orebore to write about anything which he had not 
probed to the roots in his own way. His supreme merit 
as historian is to have insisted in season and out of season 
on the Unity of History. But his own practice did not 
altogether do justice to his great theory. Those who do 
not know his occasional essays and voluminous notes and 
articles might imagine that he confined himself to the 
grand struggle between English, Danes, and Normans. 
And it must be admitted that with all his passion for hav- 
ing the whole of history read together as one continuous 
biography of Man, he speaks at times as if Gauls, the 
Latin races altogether, and modern men in general, were a 
poor and degenerate race, whose scuffles and vagaries 
need not detain ' a serious historian ' bent on attaining to 
the higher truth. 

This was assuredly not the tone of the famous Rede 
lecture of 1872. That was in some respects the broadest 
and most masterly of all Freeman's essays. We must 
cast away all distinctions of ' ancient ' and modern, of 
'dead' and 'living,' and most boldly grapple with the 
great fact of the unity of history. As man is the same 
in all ages, the history of man is one in all ages. This 
and all the reasoning by which the lecturer supported and 
illustrated his argument, was a powerful corrective of the 
pedantry which had led the universities to approach his- 
tory through the avenue of classical literature. ' European 
history,' he declares, ' from its first glimmerings to our own 
day, is one unbroken drama, no part of which can be 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 5 

rightly understood without reference to the other parts 
which come before and after it.' We must look at the 
history of man, he adds, at all events at the history of 
Aryan man in Enrope, as one unbroken whole, no part of 
which can be safely looked at without reference to other 
parts. 

Here we have Freeman's philosophy of history in all 
its strength and also in its weakness. His conception of 
the unity of history, that ' the history of man is one in all 
ages,' is truly and strongly grasped. It is the very foun- 
dation of a philosophical view of the human record. No 
English historian, no English philosopher, has ever stated 
it with such an inner hold on its meaning. Neither Mac- 
aulay nor Hallam, neither Grote nor Finlay, neither Mil- 
man nor Froude, ever press this idea of the unity of his- 
tory upon our minds. Mill and Spencer hold the doctrine, 
but neither of them are in any sense historians, and Spen- 
cer finds little at all to interest him in the history of any 
but uncivilised men. But Freeman, whilst holding the 
•continuity of history as firmly as Mill himself, possessed 
an intimate knowledge of large parts of the vast human 
record. 

Unfortunately our Professor weakened the force of his 
own teaching by a fatal qualification. His statement of 
the unity of man's history wanted nothing in breadth, in 
fervour, and intensity of grasp, until he limited it to ' the 
history of the Aryan nations in Europe.' 'European his- 
tory,' he says, 'is one unbroken drama.' 'The history of 
Aryan man in Europe is one unbroken whole.' This is a 
fatal concession to classical pedantry and modern conceit. 
By placing the history of Greece and of Rome, and then 
of mediaeval North Europe, on a pedestal above all other 
history. Freeman spoiled the philosophical basis on which 
he was entrenched. All the new researches into pre- 



6 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

historic ages, and the early career of African and Asian 
races, by which history and philosophy have been so 
greatly inspired, the immense developments of industrial, 
social, political, and religious life in these recent centuries — 
all this was almost a closed book to the learned historian of 
Greeks and Angles. In the result, in spite of the truly 
ample form in which he announced the conception of the 
unity of history, in pratice he rather reserved his passion- 
ate enthusiasm for the three phases of Greek, Roman, and 
Teutonic civiHsation, and the latter only in its mediaeval 
age. In all of these. Freeman is an acute and profound 
scholar. But, as nine-tenths of human history left him 
without much living interest, he missed a true philosophy 
of history. 

The vague and halting language which Freeman uses 
about scientific history in his six lectures on Comparative 
Politics, 1873, sufficiently proves that he had no real grasp 
on social philosophy at all. In a characteristic note, he 
tells us it were better the science should *go nameless than 
bear the burden of such a name as, for instance, Sociology.' 
When he talks about the supreme discovery of the com- 
parative method in philology, in mythology, in politics, and 
history, as a memorable stage in the progress of the human 
mind, he betrays a curious confusion of thought. To put 
the scientific laws of human evolution on a level with com- 
parative mythology and philology is to take a very low 
conception of the great achievement of our century. The 
comparative method is a valuable resource in Sociology, as 
it is in Biology : but it is only one of many methods, and 
to erect it into a science by itself is wholly misleading. 
The study of human fictions, myths, and beliefs (the study 
of religious evolution, in fact) is an important element in 
Sociology, and so is the study'of the evolution of language. 
And the study of Comparative Politics is also a part of the 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 7 

entire science of Social Evolution. But all of these are 
merely some of the instruments and methods of a compre- 
hensive science of human society. They are as completely 
subordinate to this larger science, and are as completely 
its aids and servants, as Embryology is subordinate to 
Biology, or Barology to Physics. And to sneer at the 
term Sociology, which is accepted by all competent philos- 
ophers, and which illustrates in its formation the abiding 
combination of Greek thought and Roman civilisation, is 
in these days a droll bit of pedantic ill-humour. The six 
lectures on Comparative Politics contain a mass of valua- 
ble learning, and are full of most interesting teaching upon 
history, but they prove that Professor Freeman, however 
great as a scholar and a student, had but slight grasp of a 
sound philosophy of history, and had no very definite 
philosophy of history of his own. 

It is as historian, in the strict sense of the term, not as 
philosopher, that Freeman's true strength lay. The two 
offices are distinct. And, though it is a defect in a histo- 
rian to be without a competent philosophy of his own art, 
it is not at all decisive of failure. Freeman had a grasp 
of the past in its living reality far too broad and too tena- 
cious to allow himself to revel in the Biblical mysticism 
which satisfied Carlyle, Ruskin, and Froude. Freeman dis- 
tinctly recognized the great truth that the facts of man's 
career (or rather of Aryan man's career in Europe) might 
conceivably be stated in terms of some general laws. And 
this, together with his own marvellous industry, and his 
passionate thirst for seeing the past as it really was, kept 
him ever the steadfast historian of truth, and not of mere 
imagination. 

Professor Freeman abundantly expounded and illustrated 
his own historical method in the nine lectures delivered 
from his chair in 1884. He there reinforces the doctrine 



8 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

of the unity of history — ' the .truth which ought to be the 
centre and life .of all our historic studies ' — as formerly 
stated in the Rede lecture, which he now traces back to 
Thomas Arnold. Nothing can be better than his protest 
against dividing up history into ' ancient ' and ' modern,' 
against allowing classical purism to dictate to the student 
of history. And his argument would have been both 
stronger and sounder if he had recognised, not merely 
continuity and unity in history, but organic evolution and 
the development of the present from the past. Although 
there is no arbitrary gulf between 'ancient' and 'modern' 
history, although all history is one continuous narrative of 
progressive civilisation, although the comparison of insti- 
tutions and societies in times old and new be most fruitful 
and instructive, still the ' new ' world never can reproduce 
the ' old ' world, and is a wholly different thing : there 
are no true ' cycles ' in human development ; history never 
repeats itself ; the Greco-Roman world has only distant 
analogies with the Feudal-Catholic world, just as this has 
only distant analogies with the Revolutionary world. The 
great phases of human civilisation are contrasted rather 
than compared ; they differ as infancy, childhood, man- 
hood, and senility differ in the individual. Sociology 
deals, not so much with the relations of institutions inter 
se, as with the evolution of society, of thoughts, of man- 
ners, of activities, and ideals. 

All that the Professor writes on the scope and difficul- 
ties of historical study is excellent. And not less so is his 
memorable protest against the sacrifice of historical truth 
to literary brilliance of form. He rises into a noble elo- 
quence in the second Oxford lecture of 1884, when he 
speaks of the temptations that beset the writer and the 
reader of history, when either are allured by the spell of 
attractive narration. We all know how this resulted to 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 9 

Freeman's own successor, of whom perhaps he was think- 
ing when he took up his parable with such prophetic vehe- 
mence against 'the evil fortune of mistaking falsehood for 
truth.' 

He speaks wisely and distinctly when he says that, ' in 
historical writing, narrative and description, though very 
far from being the whole of the matter, are no small part 
of it.' It would be difficult to find a better statement of 
the truth. Freeman's practice in this matter hardly illus- 
trated his theory. Style, form, literary terseness, and bril- 
liancy, never were Freeman's forte. And, unfortunately, 
it is his longer and more elaborate performances that are 
most jejune. He could write finely at times, as we see in 
many parts of his Essays and Addresses. Rome, Byzan- 
tium, Athens, stirred him to eloquence. He wrote always 
correctly and clearly ; and he thought that enough for the 
historian. But the enormous length of his Norman Con- 
quest and William RufiLS, with the abysmal notes and 
mighty Index, the Sicily, and the Old English History are 
so much overladen with trivial details, told with such por" 
tentious long-windedness, that only professional students, 
examinees, schoolmasters, and school-scholars, really mas- 
ter them. Narrative and description, he truly says, are no 
small part of historical writing. Amplification, intermina- 
ble detail, and the pedagogue's desire to correct every con- 
ceivable blunder into which the reader might stray, grew 
upon him, until, in the greater histories, flesh and blood 
wearies of committing to memory, and even of reading, 
the mountains of information with which the learned his- 
torian is charged. 

Hence Freeman retained to the last a great deal of the 
pedagogue in manner, though he was no professional 
teacher, even in his Oxford chair. What would have been 
the result if Gibbon had poured out on us all that he had 



10 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

ever read or copied into his note-books ; or if Thucydides 
had put into eight volumes, instead of eight chapters, all 
that he had ever heard told him ? Not only does Freeman 
amplify his historical narrative till it becomes wearisome 
to all save the systematic student, but when he has to limit 
himself to a short narration he becomes almost common- 
place and dull. A few hundred pages do not offer him 
space enough to deploy his hoplites. Having published 
his monumental history of the Norman Conquest, whereof 
the life and work of William himself fills two or three thou- 
sand pages, Freeman was induced to write the Life of the 
Conqueror in 200 pages for a popular series. No man living 
had anything like his consummate knowledge of the subject, 
or had more perfect command of all the materials. One 
would have thought that Freeman would have produced 
a fascinating biography almost stans pede in una, without 
preparation or labour. But he did not seem to enjoy the 
task ; and the book he produced is the least interesting of 
all his works.^ 

All that Freeman said or wrote about original author- 
ities is truly excellent. It is doubtless the most important 
part of his teaching. And happily he illustrated his own 
admirable precepts by no less admirable practical exam- 
ples of his own. He opens the fourth Oxford lecture 
with the excellent maxim : ' The kernel of all sound teach- 
ing in historical matters is the doctrine that no historical 
study is of any value which does not take in a knowledge 
of original authorities.' He carefully explains that 'take 

1 He never hesitated to infuse into his writing antique words, in their orig- 
inal alphabetic form. Thus he wrote : ' He who chooses a great writer of any 
age as his book does in some sort enroll himself in the comitatus of the writer 
of that book. He seeks him to lord ; he becomes his man ; he owes him the 
honourable duty of a faithful eraipos or gesifS ; he does not owe him the crin- 
ging worship of the ^ov\Q<i or the \>eofv.^ 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN II 

in ' does not mean ' limit itself to,' as some of the Freeman- 
nikins absurdly pretend. And he explains with singular 
clearness and judgment what constitutes an 'original au- 
thority ' in the best sense — those who wrote from their 
own first-hand knowledge after careful weighing of all the 
available witnesses. Again, he fully allows the impor- 
tance of many truly original authorities other than written 
narratives, such as oflEicial documents, treaties, statutes, 
coins, inscriptions, drawings, buildings, and many physical 
evidences and monuments. 

The numerous works of Freeman present us with a series 
of almost perfect examples of how original authorities may 
be tested, combined, and used. It will be noticed that he 
says but little of the use of unpublished manuscripts. A 
vulgar impression existed at one time that Freeman com- 
posed his histories largely from such unedited manuscripts, 
and he tells us that he was once asked if any of the author- 
ities he used had ever been printed. We now know that 
Freeman made no use in practice of unedited manuscripts ; 
and he hardly ever resorted to them except for some spe- 
cial or occasional reference. Therein he showed his sound 
judgment and his thorough scholarship. The deciphering 
and copying of antique manuscripts is a special art, of im- 
mense difficulty and laboriousness, and for the early Mid- 
dle Ages, at any rate, requires many years of special study, 
and is comphcated with knotty problems of the age, the 
country, the language, the profession, and the personal 
equation of each particular writer. For a man like Pro- 
fessor Freeman, who was dealing with at least ten centuries 
in most of the countries of Europe, to have mastered the 
palaeography of all the original authorities was a physical 
impossibility. To have attempted it would have been a 
melancholy waste of his time and labour. And he very 
properly left this curious and rare learning to the experts, 



12 FIISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

palaeographers, and editors of special epochs, to whom it 
naturally belongs. 

A great amount of folly and cant is now current about 
' original authorities,' as if these could be nothing but un- 
edited manuscripts. A truly preposterous attention and 
an unreal value are now being given to unedited manu- 
scripts, as if these were the sole resources of the historian, 
and as if he had always to decipher them with his own 
eye. No doubt ' original authorities ' existed once in man- 
uscript. But, happily, the larger part have long been 
edited and commented on by learned experts and scholars. 
When we get to the seventeenth century, the laborious 
historian may himself use manuscripts with freedom, as 
has been done with such admirable results by Macaulay, 
Carlyle, S. R. Gardiner, C. H. Firth, and others. But for 
the historian of early ages, dealing with an ample field of 
many centuries, to embarrass himself with palaeography, 
except of necessity, is a wanton waste of force, and a great 
source of error. We know the welter of confusion into 
which Froude floundered when he went to Vienna and 
Samancas. Palaeography is a very complicated and diffi- 
cult art, and there is a special palaeography for almost 
every century, each country, and almost every class and 
person. Freeman had other things to do than to acquire 
this art. He never pretended to have done so, and neither 
his precept nor his example gave any sort of countenance 
to the current palaeographic superstitions. 

Of course, it is of importance that all manuscript author- 
ities of the smallest value should be accurately deciphered, 
copied, and edited. And the work that is being done by 
competent editors is excellent material for the future 
historians. But it is quite distinct from the work of the 
historian proper ; although, where the age is not distant, 
and the subject of the history limited to a generation or 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 1 3 

two, a wise historian like Mr. S. R. Gardiner will resort to 
the unedited material himself. But the fashion of the day 
is to attach a mystical value to a bit of written paper, 
however trivial be the writing on it, and however great a 
fool or liar the writer may have been. Raw girls, who 
could tell us nothing about the battle of Salamis or the 
French Convention, are encouraged to devote years of 
their lives to deciphering the washing accounts of a medi- 
aeval convent, the lists of the swine on a particular manor, 
or the tittle-tattle of some bed-chamber woman. It is con- 
ceivable that a competent historian might make use of 
washing-bills, farm-inventories, and chambermaids' scan- 
dal. But, until he asks for it, it is childish to call this 
rubbish ' original work,' simply because it can be made 
out from a mouldy bit of paper in an illegible hand of 
some centuries ago. What sort of ' history ' of the reign 
of Victoria would be concocted if the learned historian 
rigidly confined himself to the 'original authorities ' to be 
found in the private correspondence of members of Parlia- 
ment, lords- and ladies-in-waiting, valets, and housemaids, 
as it passed through the Post Office, or was entered in 
their diaries .? To this folly Freeman gave no kind of 
support, either by teaching or in practice. He did quite 
the contrary : though he is often cited as if, by relying on 
' original authorities,' he attached a special and sacramen- 
tal efficacy to any bit of old paper. The ' originality ' of 
the document is not important. The real question con- 
cerns the knowledge, the good sense, the good faith of the 
man or woman who wrote on the paper. 

There is great danger in our time that we fall into error 
by exaggerating the importance of what is known as ' new 
material,' and 'unpublished manuscripts.' The raw 
B.A.'s fresh from the schools' examinations, who concoct 
anonymous reviews, make a fuss about any ' new material,' 



14 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

however trivial and mendacious, and treat with sovereign 
disdain anything composed from sources in print. But 
' new material ' and ' unpublished manuscripts ' may be 
utterly misleading, and, ex Jiypothesi, are often secret, one- 
sided, prejudiced, and malicious. We see the lying stuff 
which is poured out daily in the continental press about 
all international affairs. All that torrent of venom and 
fable is unpublished manuscript till it gets into type. The 
private despatches, diaries, and memoranda in the chan- 
ceries, offices, and pigeon-holes of governments are often 
little more trustworthy and impartial. But if any of these 
hurried, partisan, and uncorrected effusions chance to be 
preserved for two or three centuries, it becomes ' new 
material,' to be treated by foolish people as if it were as 
sacred as Holy Writ. 

What sort of a ' history ' of our own generation would 
result if the historian relied upon his exclusive access to 
the private letters, diaries, or memoranda kept by the 
secretaries or the confidants of any amongst our leading 
politicians, or by the editor of a party journal. Some 
curious revelations there might be ; but how little to be 
trusted as complete or conclusive ! No doubt, if every 
letter, memorandum, conversation, and private discussion, 
were together before the historian, as fully and truthfully 
as they are believed to be known to the Recording Angel 
above, a great historian of vast industry, and high judicial 
power, would at last reach the truth. But this is what we 
never have, and never can have. A bit of the ' original 
manuscripts' chances to be preserved — the mere flotsam 
and jetsam of some huge wreck : perhaps, it may be, one 
is saved where a hundred are lost. It may be useful : the 
chances are that it is unimportant ; but, taken alone as an 
authority, it may be utterly misleading. Even such his- 
torians as Macaulay and Gardiner, masters as they are of 



HISrORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 15 

the entire printed and manuscript materials of the brief 
period they study, seem at times disposed to trust over much 
to the private opinions, hearsay, and scandal, sent home to 
his employers, or sent off to amuse a friend, by some en- 
voy, secretary, agent, or correspondent. The historian 
has access only, on each point, to at most two or three 
such diaries, despatches, and correspondences ; and the 
temptation is great to rely on what he has got or has 
found. Where great men feel the temptation, little men 
fall before it. They share the prejudices of the writer, 
and they reproduce his libels and his blunders. When 
one sees how unpublished manuscripts have been used by 
the friends and enemies in turn of such struggles as the 
Reformation, the Civil Wars, the French Revolution, and 
the Irish Troubles — one is tempted to look with suspi- 
cion on ' extracts ' and summmaries of manuscript sources 
which we have not before us. It were safer that * new 
material ' should be left to the really great historians who 
devote whole lives and vast learning to a short period. It 
is a very dangerous tool in the hands of the lads and 
lasses who swagger about with it in public. 

To this conceited fad Freeman gave no countenance at 
any time. He never doubted the central truth that history 
in the higher sense can only be composed with brains. 
Brains, knowledge of men, insight into things political and 
social, are the indispensable qualities for the historian. 
Industry, accuracy, impartiality, patience, wide culture, 
literary power — all these are good and needful ; but they 
may all be rendered nugatory without the brain to under- 
stand politics and men of action. As the painter, asked 
how he mixed his glowing colours, replied that ' he mixed 
them with brains,' so the historian may reply that it is 
with brains that he truly records the past. The modern 
superstition that the past can be interpreted by laboriously 



l6 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

copying out and piecing together such scraps of written 
paper as time has chanced to spare did not satisfy Free- 
man. The historian, first and foremost, must be a politi- 
cian, in the sense of having the instinct and experience 
which give him the understanding of political acts and 
persons. 

Now, Freeman was a politician, as was his master 
Thomas Arnold, as was Macaulay, as was Gibbon, as were 
de Commines and Machiavelli. Freeman was a politician ; 
and for all his vast learning and patient collation of every 
written authority, he looked at men and events with a 
political eye, and with the grasp of a practical politician. 
It is unfortunately true that Freeman as a politician had 
many of the defects of that quality. He had prejudices — 
some really furious prejudices; he had race antipathies, 
religious odium, loathing of particular schools of thought, 
of nations, and writers. All this deeply discredited ^his 
impartiality as a general authority on universal history — 
a pretension indeed which he would have been the first to 
disclaim. It made several of his judgments unsound and 
some of them laughably unfair. His contemptuous ignor- 
ing of almost every deed, man, or movement in any mem- 
ber of the Latin races, later at least than the fifteenth 
century, his hatred of all Buonapartes {sic), his contempt 
for the eighteenth century and all its works in Europe, his 
loathing of Turks and all things Turkish — these things 
detract from his standing as a great historian, but happily 
they did not seriously affect his principal tasks. If they 
led to a somewhat extravagant enthusiasm for Saxon 
Englishmen and their influence on the world, they do not 
affect his estimate of Charles and Alfred, Harold and 
William, the two Emperors Frederick, and Edward the 
First. This was Freeman's true field ; and, when he left 
it, he was often far from an infallible guide. But the very 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 1/ 

energy of his prejudices showed that he was no mere an- 
tiquary, copying out the notes of annaUsts, but was a man 
of strong poHtical ideas seeking to judge men and to 
understand their acts. 

There is another habit of mind, almost as essential to 
the historian as the political habit, and that is familiarity 
with the methods of proof which trained lawyers require 
as evidence. No historian has ever insisted so ably and 
at such length on the nature of trustworthy evidence as 
did Freeman. His teaching of his own method is excel- 
lent, and his own practice is hardly less valuable. But for 
his personal prejudices, Freeman might have made a very 
competent judge of a superior court. His patience and 
industry, his accuracy, his respect for written authority, 
and his passion for comparing and weighing evidence, 
were all eminently judicial. And his Essays as well as 
his Histories are models of the art of patiently collecting 
all the available evidence and then of weighing it in a 
balance, step by step, as to its comparative value. Free- 
man, of course, was not by any means the first historian 
to do this ; nor has his system advanced on all that had 
been done long before him in Germany. But he has done 
more perhaps than any Englishman before him to explain 
the method in use, to illustrate his own injunctions, and to 
urge its immense importance. And hence he may fairly 
be regarded as the foremost English exponent of the test- 
ing of historical evidence, whereon he laboured so con- 
scientiously both in theory and in practice. 

There is a branch of the use of historical evidence 
which the zealous students of documents usually neglect, 
unless they have had something like a serious legal train- 
ing. The lawyer is habitually slow to accept the state- 
ments of fact in documents laid before him until these 
statements have been tested in cross-examination, and 



1 8 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

until the character of the witness has been laid bare in 
open court. He knows that in disputed cases of fact 
whole mountains of affidavits and paper evidence suggest 
to him little more than prima facie presumptions, until 
ample proof has been given of the credibility, good faith, 
and first-hand knowledge of the author of each document. 
Now, the facts in dispute in doubtful matters of history 
are enormously more complex and obscure than the evi- 
dence in any single cause at trial. The documentary 
evidence laid before the historian forms but casual scraps 
of information in comparison with the evidence in a cause 
prepared by experts having large compulsory powers. 
Yet the historian can use nothing but the documents that 
chance has left him ; and all cross-examination and serious 
testing of the witnesses' veracity and knowledge are out of 
the question. The cases are rare indeed where a judge 
would feel certainty on mere documentary evidence such 
as that which is the sole resource of the historian. The 
judge knows how often the whole apparatus of justice fails 
to reach the facts of a simple matter. The historian — 
even the most patient and judicious of historians — insen- 
sibly comes to credit his documents, or some of them ; and 
he rarely admits to himself that he has no adequate means 
of reaching the truth of tangled events, where the actors 
intended to mislead each other, the world, and posterity. 
The historian habitually shrinks from a verdict of Not 
Proven, though his bare documents — untested, ancient, 
and casual as they are — seldom enable him to go further 
in disputed facts. 

Nearly all historians who attempt to give, with photo- 
graphic minuteness, the exact details of complicated and 
obscure events, are wont to overrate the possibility of reach- 
ing the truth with the resources they have It is the be- 
setting weakness of the most industrious and careful of 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 19 

historians. The masses of documents they have accumu- 
lated always seem to promise them certainty. It is a com- 
mon delusion. Masses of documents will little avail where 
it is impossible to ask a single question, to hear a single 
witness speak, or to pass one inch outside the paper frag- 
ments which ruthless time may have spared. It is the 
Nemesis of the modern mania for original research and 
special detail. Now, Freeman, in his lectures and essays, 
often warns students against this very error. In his third 
Oxford address he very humorously showed how easy it 
was to be misled by a witness whom you could not cross- 
examine. In practice, he too often fell into the mistake 
of many learned historians, who imagine that unwearied 
diligence, great accuracy of reading, and constant collation 
of documents, will enable them to give a detailed narrative 
of complicated events, centuries old, with all the minute 
fidelity of a Times report of a parliamentary debate. It 
fascinates us, until the endless bulk of detail wearies us ; 
then we lose all sense of proportion, and are puzzled by 
the hordes of small facts that press on the memory ; and 
at last we toss aside the interminable volumes, each of 
which carries us only a year or two further, and recounts 
one or two more campaigns and intrigues. And, after all, 
it is not certainty we have — for certainty, we are told, is 
recorded only in Heaven — it is not the absolute truth, it 
is merely a most ingenious mosaic, pieced together out of 
chance remnants of paper, themselves, alas ! too often the 
record of ignorance, mendacity, and gossip ! 

Freeman was perfectly aware of all this, and in his own 
histories he is anxiously on his guard to test, not only (i) 
what is written, but (2) who wrote it, and (3) what did the 
writer know himself t But the enormous detail which 
Freeman felt it a point of conscience to impose on his 
readers led him into a kindred fault. He knew that he 



20 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFcSSOR FREEMAN 

himself knew everything that could be known of his sub- 
ject. He took care to prove this to his reader ; but, further- 
more, he determined that the reader himself should know 
everything that could be known. Now the unhappy 
reader, unless he was an examiner or an examinee, too 
often sank under the ordeal. This is the age of Photog- 
raphy, minutest Realism, of fissiparous Specialism, of the 
Infinitesimal. And our histories have to be constructed on 
the methods of a German savant hunting for microbes 
with a microscope. For purposes of investigation this is 
invaluable, and has given us memorable triumphs of re- 
search. But, to impart history to the public, a totally 
different process is required. There, what is wanted is 
grouping, condensation, synthetic composition — a life- 
like picture, not a photographic negative. And the his- 
torian who loads his mxassive volumes with all the smallest 
details which his instruments reveal commits the same 
fault as the painter who, in the early days of Pre-Rafael- 
itism, was said to have filled his canvas with some millions 
of strokes, when the eye of the beholder could barely 
grasp more than a few hundred at sight. 

It must be confessed that the great History of the Nor- 
man Conquest, with its five volumes, 3700 pages, and 
Index volume, and William Rnfus, with its two volumes 
and 1356 pages, make a work, which by its bulk is beyond 
the powers of the general public to master. It is the his- 
tory of one people — -a very great people — at a very 
important crisis ; but at best it deals with one corner of 
Europe, and covers (after the sketch in the first volume) 
hardly more than half a century. At this rate, a hundred 
volumes would hardly contain the annals of our own coun- 
try ; and five or six hundred volumes would hardly suffice 
for the history of the European nations since their incor- 
poration with Rome. And even then, there would remain 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 21 

a collection, hardly less ample, for the ages that preceded 
the Roman Empire, and for all the races of Eastern 
Europe, Africa, Asia, and America. The vision of a 
thousand volumes of 700 pages each rather daunts the 
reader, however anxious to study the past. * What is that 
to me ? ' cries the learned historian. ' This is my period, 
to which I have devoted my life.' The world, however, 
is not as fond of ' periods ' as a schoolteacher and a 
college tutor. 

Ours is the age of examinations. To-day, the world 
naturally divides itself into examiners and examinees. 
And the system of ' Periods ' and of minute Realism, is 
the very life-blood of examining. What our grandfathers 
used to call Polite Literature is dominated by the exami- 
nation mania. And books are tested, precisely like an 
undergraduate's paper-work, by the subtraction of 'marks' ; 
and for 'marks' nothing counts but blunders and omissions. 
The three-button Mandarins who control the higher educa- 
tion of our time are reducing the whole intellectual life of 
our age to a uniform scheme of Class, Pass, and Pluck, 
which requires little thought, and a great deal of blue pen- 
cil. If Gibbon were to be writing now, his work would be 
pronounced to be ' meagre,' ' sketchy,' and ' viewy ' ; and 
as he could show no acquaintance with Hopf and Von 
Maurer, he would be marked down as a third-class his- 
torian. The examination vi7'?is is eating away the very 
brain fibre of our age — just as it has done in China. And 
these monumental triumphs of infinitesimal realism in nar- 
row ' periods ' are at once the product of examination and 
the mdiis wherein its poison germinates. 

To the student of English history, Freeman's History of 
the Norman Conquest will always remain invaluable, a 
repertory of learned research, a monument of enlightened 
judgment, a manual of the evolution of the English race. 



22 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

By precept and example the scholar learns from it how to 
weigh and compare authorities, and how to marshal his 
historical evidence. The first volume (pubHshed in 1867) 
deals with some five or six centuries in as many hundred 
pages. It is the introduction and summary : and therefore 
is in many ways the most successful. It is true that it con- 
sists rather of a series of essays than of continuous narrative. 
But the whole work is in some sense a series of essays ; 
for the enormous bulk of the text and notes, the avalanche 
of facts and discussions which pour forth on the reader, 
seriously impair the sense of continuous narrative of the 
Norman Gonquest, from which the attention is distracted 
by incidental lucubrations and interminable prolixity. 

The second volume deals with the reign of the Confes- 
sor (less than twenty-four years) in 651 pages. The third 
volume, with j6% pages, deals only with the year 1066. 
In this volume the expedition of William fills about 1 50 
pages, the great battle of Hastings occupying about fifty 
pages. The fourth volume, dealing with the reign of the 
Conqueror in England (i 066- 1087) occupies 724 pages. 
The fifth volume, with its Illustrations and Reflections on 
the Conquest, fills 901 pages. The Appendices alone of 
the five volumes, with a long array of learned and valuable 
essays on special points in the history, fill 700 pages, and 
are (for the student and examinee) not the least important 
part of the whole work. The Index, a monument of dili- 
gence and precision, occupies a sixth volume. And then 
follow two volumes on the short reign of William Rufus. 
This is a magnificent scale on which to narrate the history 
of our country down to the end of the eleventh century. 

The student of history, the trained scholar, takes in 
every word of this mass of learning and wise judgment, 
and finds it a perfect encyclopaedia for the eleventh cen- 
tury in England. But the whole of it seldom reaches 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 23 

Others than trained scholars. It lacks the continuity, the 
directness, and narrative movement of a great history. 
The expedition of William, the invasion of Tosti and 
Harold Hardrada, the campaigns of Stamford Bridge 
and Hastings, are all told with the enthusiasm of a 
stout English spirit, and the learning of a Gibbon and a 
Macaulay. But, alas ! they lack the literary magic of 
Gibbon or Macaulay. In the heat of battle we are pulled 
up to discuss the relative weight of authorities, whether 
Harold was fully entrenched, the arguments for and against 
a particular form of weapon, and many subtle points of 
topographical precision. It is not thus that the average 
reader of history cares to have the story of a great battle 
told him. He has no taste for learned Appendices about 
local topography — hardly intelligible away from the spot. 
And the result is that this great work of English history, 
which stands in the front rank to the serious scholar, has 
not a tenth part of the readers of far inferior works. 

The life work of Professor Freeman is as yet the most 
memorable type of that which is the peculiar note of our 
age, the minute subdivision of history into special periods 
and the multiplication of petty detail. There is no evil, 
of course, in accurate knowledge of real things — no evil, 
but good. And the more sound Research we can have 
the better, provided we know how to use it with sense. 
The evil comes in when Research into myriads of special 
periods, topics, institutions, is mistaken for history, super- 
sedes history, chokes off serious history. That is our 
danger. The dominant authority over human action vested 
in History in its higher sense, the Unity of History, the 
moral and social meaning of History, as the indispensable 
basis of Social Philosophy, this, in the words of Comte 
quoted by the Professor of History at Cambridge, is the 
intellectual feature of our age : it has been insisted on here 



24 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

by Thomas Arnold, by Freeman, by Stubbs, by Bryce, by 
Seeley, by Lecky, by John Morley and Lord Acton. Of 
all these, Freeman has embodied this truth in the most 
ample language and with the most passionate conviction. 
The pity is, that his great works have had indirectly a 
somewhat contrary effect. 

'The history of man is one in all ages,' says Freeman. 
We must look at history ' as one unbroken whole, no part 
of which can be safely looked at without reference to other 
parts.' The entire fabric of Social Science rests on that 
dominant doctrine. It cannot be stated more amply and 
peremptorily than it was stated by Freeman. Was this 
his own practice : is it the tendency of modern histories ? 
In spite of some fine examples of synthetic history, as 
Gibbon, as Arnold, as Hallam, Milman, Grote, and Thirl- 
wall, understood history, massing the centuries, the nations, 
the inspiring forces, into organic wholes, there can be no 
doubt that our analytic and microbic Research immensely 
overshadows our coordinating activity. And the more 
ardent adepts of special Research are telling us now to 
leave all attempts at reconstructive history, at the synthetic 
biography of men and nations, until every muniment pile 
in Europe, Asia, or Africa, shall be definitely calendared, 
and every individual fact about the Past shall be exactly 
interpreted, edited, and given to the world. 

It is a specious, but vain delusion. As well might men 
have said : * Do not attempt to construct a theory of the 
solar system, until every speck of light discoverable by the 
most powerful telescope has been locally determined, and 
its conceivable variations compared at least over a thou- 
sand years ! ' Men might have said: 'Attempt no organic 
biology, until every germ, microbe, and fibre in every 
living being has been studied in fifty million monographs ! ' 
This is not science ; it is pedantry. The recoverable facts 



HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 25 

of the Past are not less numerous than the specks of light 
in the Milky Way, and not one out of any million is more 
important to human life. The real problem for man is to 
discover that one out of any million which is important — 
and this is what no industry can do without brains, with- 
out scientific and philosophic power. The tendency of 
modern palaeographic Research is to multiply monographs, 
from which scientific coordination and philosophic syn- 
thesis shall be eliminated as if it were an irritant poison. 

The grounds on which this mania for palaeographic 
Research threatens mischief are numerous, and each of 
them is simply decisive. The discoverable facts (or rather 
statements) are literally infinite. They are growing hour 
by hour at a ratio far greater than any waste. To adjourn 
rational coordination of these infinite facts (or statements) 
till they are all registered is to adjourn it indefinitely. In 
the next place, quite a thousandth part of these facts are 
perfectly valueless, and can do nothing but burden the 
memory and obfuscate thought. The most powerful 
genius could do nothing with limitless materials ; nor 
could Charles Darwin have worked out his thoughts had 
he been compelled to study every specimen collected in 
every museum or cabinet in Europe, and to read through 
every monograph turned out in the present century. In 
the next place, the blind and unintelligent study of facts, 
merely as facts, deadens the sense of proportion and rela- 
tive value both for student and reader, and causes both to 
attach abnormal importance to the most paltry discovery, 
which acquires a fictitious value simply because it was 
difficult. And, finally, the so-called facts of history are 
not scientifically demonstrable at all, but at best are little 
but high probabilities. The physical sciences have a 
number of resources which are closed to the historian, 
who cannot experiment, isolate, or cultivate his microbes, 



26 HISTORICAL METHOD OF PROFESSOR FREEMAN 

but can only trust the antique reports of ignorant, preju- 
diced, and careless scribes. We can be certain only of 
the broader facts of the historical record. Doubt increases, 
for the most part, in direct ratio with the minuteness of the 
special detail. We may rest assured that Julius Caesar 
defeated Pompeius and was killed by Brutus and Cassius. 
Whole lives might be wasted in vain in seeking to prove 
what were his last words, and what passed between him 
and Cleopatra. History, in its worthy sense, is the main 
organon of Social Philosophy. To fulfil its high task, it 
must be organic and inspired with Synthetic Philosophy. 
To degrade History to the tabulating of interminable trivi- 
alities is to return to the literary pedantry of the copious 
but mindless tedium of the Byzantine annalists. 

Yet, if Freeman were not a philosophic historian, not 
even a great historian at all, he was a consummate master 
of historical Research, and a noble inspirer of his- 
torical enthusiasm. For all his dogmatism, he was no 
pedant ; in spite of prejudice, he had a passionate devo- 
tion to historical truth. His vast industry, his marvellous 
memory, his devotion to his high calling through a life of 
labour and singleness of purpose, will long secure him an 
honourable place amongst the teachers of our age. He 
was no mere specialist, no simple archaeologist, no cold- 
blooded scholar. His studies ranged over broad epochs 
of ancient as well as modern history — over ethnology, 
geography, philology, palaeology, and architecture, as well 
as history and politics proper. To them all he brought 
the truly historic mind — which is the mind of profound 
sympathy with the great deeds and passionate hopes of 
Man in the Past. 



LIBRARY 



OF CONGRESS 




0020 676 535 5 g 




